Kupersmith, Violet

With endings that feel like fingertips on the neck instead of punches to the gut, these stories are best suited for those seeking unsettling rather than terrifying fiction, such as Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny.

The wunderkind moniker will soon enough be attached to the 1989-born Kupersmith, who wrote most of these stories as a Mt. Holyoke undergraduate. Her mature-beyond-her-years debut deserves equal shelf space with other spare, provocative collections, such as Paul Yoon's Once the Shore, Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds, and Yoko Ogawa's Revenge. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/13.]